


The Prayer of Going Nowhere Going Nowhere

by wibblyR



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Ghost!Athelstan, M/M, blowjob, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wibblyR/pseuds/wibblyR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan's ghost visits Ragnar again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prayer of Going Nowhere Going Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> I assumed with certainty that this season would also give me a fic idea, and it did, but it took me several months of pondering "how does one go about fucking a ghost?" to come away with... this. I don't really know. I haven't even reread it. Here you go.  
> I'm done with Vikings though.  
> Siken's Torn-Up Road for the title.

He cannot touch him. He cannot.

Ragnar lies awake so many nights, trying to summon Athelstan’s ghost.

He was real. Ragnar felt his hands on his feet. Athelstan can touch Ragnar, but Ragnar cannot touch Athelstan. His fingers are restless, aching, reaching endlessly through the dark, wishing for it to turn into the black tangled hair his hand has weaved through so many times.

He was real. Ragnar felt his hands on his feet. The water, cold as ice, flowing gently between Athelstan’s hands. He had always been so good with his hands. Ragnar had felt more baptized in that moment that when he was sunk in the Seine. Ragnar keeps the memory of that touch for days on end, holding onto it for when he is alone and imagines those hands traveling elsewhere. But they are ghosts; they fade as soon as they leave his feet.

Ragnar grows irritable with time itself. Wishing he could stop it from passing and pushing that vision further into the past. He has taken to falling asleep on his throne as he plays the memory over and over again.

Until one time he wakes with a startle from a touch. Ethereal and real at the same time. He looks down, barely believing his eyes. He dares not move lest what happened last time is doomed to repeat itself in the same way. He drinks the view of Athelstan, in his monk garb, kneeling for him once again. But this is not the same kneeling. There is no bowl of water this time. There is Athelstan and his eyes full of fondness instead of gentle authority – Ragnar has never been able to resist either, coming from him.

Will he say something? Ragnar wished he could urge him to do so without fearing blowing the ghost away. His voice, his beautiful, unmistakable voice, he hadn’t realized the words had haunted him as much as the touch.

Then Athelstan – Athelstan’s phantom – reaches with both hands for Ragnar’s knees. Ragnar catches himself before gasping and exhales shakily instead. A blizzard, Thor’s thunder, a raid of enemies could not budge him in this instant. Athelstan’s hands slide up his thighs and Ragnar’s breath is ruined. Through the cloth he can feel the softness that has never quite left the priest’s skin.

He suspects what Athelstan is about to do but can’t believe it, can’t blink away from the sight of the ghost moving further between his legs and waking his arousal with just the promise that is his mouth on his breeches. Ragnar grips his armrests when his erection is touched, oh so gently and fleetingly, as if Athelstan himself is afraid of the weakness of his grasp on the world of the living. But determination was always one of his many qualities.

Ragnar wants to close his eyes in bliss as he has done many times, for Athelstan’s mouth is always a homecoming for his cock, but he cannot afford it, his eyes achingly wide and hungrily imprinting this new memory of Athelstan’s head bobbing between his thighs. He can feel the knots of scars on Athelstan’s palms on his pulsing veins, on his tightening balls.

His fingers move almost unconsciously to come rest at the back of Athelstan’s skull, against his brown locks. Athelstan looks up at him hazily but Ragnar knows it’s a warning. He cannot touch him.

He squeezes his armrests again instead, but he’s smiling. He can at least move his hips a little. Athelstan always welcomes all of him without a complaint. It’s exactly a blowjob like in the time when Athelstan was… alive.

How can he be dead, when he is there, real, pleasuring him selflessly like he used to? What kind of place is Heaven for letting Athelstan visit and worship a mortal like this? Is Athelstan trapped between life and death, flickering in and out of existence? Is he, in any way, not dead?

That graze of teeth against his frenulum, that sucking on the head of his cock, that hot breath, that pulse in Athelstan’s warm cheeks; it’s real. It’s alive.

“Athelstan”, he can’t help but let out as he comes messily.

“Ragnar.” No sound on earth is comparable to his name on this tongue, in this lilt, in this voice.

Ragnar gapes. His fingers twitch. His vision blurs.

“You answer.” It’s a question.

“You called.”

A veil seems torn between them and Athelstan suddenly looks emotional, less formal, his gaze urgent and terrified, and his hands and mouth fly up to Ragnar’s face to kiss him.

Ragnar is alone. He blinks away an icy tear that rolls down his cheek to his ghost-kissed lips.


End file.
